Blog.

11 Trends for 2011

Last night Dr Dave Chaffey was in town speaking at Manchester Metropolitan Uni. The event was well attended by marketing students and many digital professionals from the local area that had come to listen to Dave Chaffey’s trends for digital marketing in 2011.

He started the presentation by briefly summarising key trends of 2010. Those being the rise in the use of social media, mobile marketing and the increased use of video technology to aid site conversion. He spoke about the change in the role of company’s websites, no longer is the website the hub of the business online it is now the heartbeat of the company sending out company information across various online platforms.

Trend 1 – Content/Engagement Strategy

As it has always been the case, content is king. However it is now all about ensuring your content is a balance between selling, informing and entertaining to ensure the audience is engaged.

Use the right touch points at the right time. It’s always been important to have a balance between your marketing activities. It is the same online, emails need to have tailored content to aid engagement the use of automated emails can ensure emails are sent out at the right time.

Trend 4 – Social Media Marketing

The rise of social media has meant that whether you are a B2B or B2C company the need for developing a social media strategy is important. Is ‘Social Business’ the new term to be banded about?

Trend 5- Display Resurgence

Many digital marketers have noticed that over recent years display ad blindness has increased and click through rate decreased. However with the introduction of Google’s Remarketing that uses cookies to allow targeted display ads to follow users around Google’s content networks has caused a resurgence of display ads with many companies seeing good results. Read our blog posts on remarketing to find out more.

Trend 6- There’s an Ap for that…

This trend mainly started with the iPhone but with the growing popularity of the likes of Aps for Google’s Android the use of Aps as a form of mobile marketing is only going to continue.

Trend 7- Googlization

The clue is in the name! Google still dominates search and is showing no signs of stopping. Most company’s digital marketing strategies are highly influenced by Google.

Trend 8- Online Channel Integration

There is talk that increasing Social Media activity is going to take over email marketing. Dave Chaffey believes that this is not the case, but there is an importance to integrate the two online marketing platforms.

Trend 9 – Touchpoint Attribution

This trend relates to converting sales online. When analysing conversion there is a need to take into consideration that what led directly to a site conversion is not always the first place the user was made aware of a product or service. For example a user that converted through visiting the site directly may have previously clicked a PPC ad and had a Remarketing ad follow them.

Trend 10 – Privacy Wars

Currently we rely on the use of cookies for Google Analytics and more recently Remarketing. This may change with the threat of new USA and European privacy laws that may be passed in 2011.

Trend 11- Digital Marketing = Marketing

Digital marketing is now no longer ‘new media’ its role in companies marketing strategies is increasing and will continue to do more so over the next 12 months.